A primary objective of a telecommunication network is to provide as complete a bandwidth usage as possible. To this end, it is common practice to combine or ‘groom’ partial or fractional DS1s into as few a number of composite T1 data streams as possible, with each T1 data stream preferably being optimally filled with a complete frame of 24 DS0s. By switching only the used data of fractional, tributary DS1 streams into a full occupied network, non-blocking digital access and cross-connect system (DACS) allows for signaling to be maintained through a switching interface. Although this allows DS0 levels of service, such as voice signals, to be maintained through the network, it suffers from the drawback that T1 level alarms, such as Yellow alarms or alarm indication signal (AIS) alarms, are lost or dropped in the course of the translation of timeslots from among different fractional T1 signal streams into a composite output T1 frame. It would be preferred that, along with the signaling information, the alarm information be preserved.